Re: Galileo's law of falling bodies (was e: free fall data)

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Check out http://galileo.imss.firenze.it/museo/4/eiv13.html
> which shows Galileo's inclined plane with five bells (and a pendulum).
> You adjust the location of the bells such that each is rung by the ball
> at the same time INTERVAL, then you can compare the distances between
> the bells.  This is not G's original apparatus or experiment, but is
> nice for showing the law of falling bodies.

I do a nice demo of this with a string onto which have been tied
a number of hex nuts at intervals of one, three, five,... units
starting from its "lower end". The string is suspended vertically
from its other end with its lower end just touching the bottom of
an inverted cardboard box which acts as a sounding board. (I must
stand on a ladder to hold the string.) When I release the string
the nuts strike the box in a perceptibly constant rhythm. I also
have a string of nuts tied at constant intervals for comparison.
This demo is very cheap and easy to perform.

Leigh